Pawsitivity Without Borders

30/10/2023

12/06/2023

Coki update! Still living his best life in HCMC, Vietnam🇻🇳. Additionally, unfortunately one of my cats, Barko, passed away due to unknown in January. It was not a happy time for me. But I’ve made the decision to adopt Deek permanently. Rescue life is hard and there’s a lot of times you end up blaming yourself for one reason or another. In a six month period I lost three pets but that is just life sometimes.

08/01/2023

You deserved better my sweet girl. Daddy’s so sorry he let you down.

30/12/2022

Deek and Barko are still doing great under my care. I’m still absolutely heartbroken that I’ve lost my first rescue in Shelly and my sweetest rescue in Negrita. It sucks. It just does. I hope that old, mangy dog and my sweet, little girl are keeping each other company.

31/10/2022

Rest in peace my sweet girl, tell Lee and Shelly you were one of my rescues too. They’ll take care of you. Te quiero siempre mi amor.

31/10/2022

27/10/2022

Helped some coworkers rescue a stray kitten tonight near Hongshan metro.

21/09/2022

Meet my new fosters starting this Sunday. Deek and Barko.

17/09/2022

Been here less than two weeks and already found a pair of stray kittens that seemingly live under the escalator in the mall in my apartment building. This is what I do at 11:30pm on a Friday night apparently.

30/08/2022

Blanco con su familia por siempre de Ecuador 🥲

17/08/2022

Chichito is still the goodest boy in Peru!

12/08/2022

This is a beautiful letter from Fiona Apple explaining to her fans why she must postpone a concert date. I am impressed at the way she was instantly able to make the decision to choose love over her career. Indeed, the world needs more of this. Enjoy the story...

It's 6pm on Friday, and I'm writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet. I'm writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later.

Here's the thing.

I have a dog, Janet, and she's been ill for about 2 years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She's almost 14 years old now. I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then — an adult, officially — and she was my kid.

She is a pitbull, and was found in Echo Park, with a rope around her neck, and bites all over her ears and face.

She was the one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders.

She's almost 14 and I've never seen her start a fight, or bite, or even growl, so I can understand why they chose her for that awful role. She's a pacifist.

Janet has been the most consistent relationship of my adult life, and that is just a fact. We've lived in numerous houses, and joined a few makeshift families, but it's always really been just the two of us.

She slept in bed with me, her head on the pillow, and she accepted my hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head.

She was under the piano when I wrote songs, barked any time I tried to record anything, and she was in the studio with me, all the time we recorded the last album.

The last time I came back from tour, she was spry as ever, and she's used to me being gone for a few weeks, every 6 or 7 years.

She has Addison's Disease, which makes it more dangerous for her to travel, since she needs regular injections of Cortisol, because she reacts to stress and excitement without the physiological tools which keep most of us from literally panicking to death.

Despite all this, she's effortlessly joyful & playful, and only stopped acting like a puppy about 3 years ago. She is my best friend, and my mother, and my daughter, my benefactor, and she's the one who taught me what love is.

I can't come to South America. Not now. When I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference.

She doesn't even want to go for walks anymore.

I know that she's not sad about aging or dying. Animals have a survival instinct, but a sense of mortality and vanity, they do not. That's why they are so much more present than people.

But I know she is coming close to the time where she will stop being a dog, and start instead to be part of everything. She'll be in the wind, and in the soil, and the snow, and in me, wherever I go.

I just can't leave her now, please understand. If I go away again, I'm afraid she'll die and I won't have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out.

Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes just to decide what socks to wear to bed.

But this decision is instant.

These are the choices we make, which define us. I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love & friendship.

I am the woman who stays home, baking Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend. And helps her be comfortable & comforted & safe & important.

Many of us these days, we dread the death of a loved one. It is the ugly truth of Life that keeps us feeling terrified & alone. I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time. I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her, and of her life and of my love for her, in the last moments.

I need to do my damnedest, to be there for that.

Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I've ever known.

When she dies.

So I am staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and I am revelling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel. And I'm asking for your blessing.

I'll be seeing you.

Love,

Fiona

27/07/2022

Negrita has finally been adopted 🥲👏. She now lives with a family who own a dog walking/pet sitting business in Vancouver and will get to just be a dog until the end of her days. She’s been renamed Cheetah as well 😂. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for her, to have her happy ever after. 🔪🧅😭

30/04/2022

Coffee’s update from Vietnam to California 🥲.

29/04/2022

Shelly & Copper 🥲

25/04/2022

I would argue this is my favorite tattoo.

23/04/2022

This silly basset hound-looking face won everyone over from our Airbnb neighbors to the other patrons at the VIP airport lounge. She was perfectly behaved and ended up spending the last leg of our flight sleeping on the woman sitting next to me’s lap. We were delayed at customs due to some miscommunication but she’s in good hands now with an established rescue here in Toronto. My job is done and I pray Cindy goes on to live her best life outside of the streets of Mexico.

23/04/2022

This silly, old, mangy dog 🥲

22/04/2022

Airport bound!

22/04/2022

Cindy likes her naps.

21/04/2022

We made it to Cancun but decided we are too cool for each other.

20/04/2022

En route to Cancun! Took a colectivo from Tulum to PDC for 50 pesos but it was so HOT and uncomfortable, taking a cab the rest of the way. We need a pet-friendly shuttle service in Quintana Roo 😅.

13/04/2022

Volunteered to be a flight angel for in Tulum, Mexico to take Cindy to Toronto on the 22nd to start living her best life. Please give their page a like, share, and follow.

I’ve had to say goodbye to two of my favorite dogs this past week. Negrita who is living a new life in Vancouver and Shelly who is in heaven eating all the carrots. Damn do I miss them. This is the hardest part of animal rescue. To accept reality, let go, and keep on rescuing. I’m here for all the animals.

13/04/2022

Shelly, you were the best damn dog we could have ever asked for.